There is the All-Truth and there the timeless bliss.
But hers are fragments of a star-lost gleam,
Hers are but careless visits of the gods.
They are a Light that fails, a Word soon hushed
And nothing they mean can stay for long on earth.
There are high glimpses, not the lasting sight.

‘There’, in the heavenly realms, can be found ‘the All-Truth’ and ‘the timeless bliss’, the ‘bliss’ that lies beyond time, unlimited by time. But here, the truths and delights which can be experienced upon earth ‘are fragments of a star-lost gleam’: small broken pieces of a light, a consciousness that has lost its guiding star and is wandering not knowing where it is going. Whatever delights Earth has to offer are due to brief and ‘careless visits of the gods’, of the higher powers. Those visits are merely ‘a Light that fails’, ‘a Word soon hushed’, so that ‘nothing they mean can stay for long on earth’. ‘On earth’ ‘There’ may be ‘high glimpses’ but ‘not the lasting sight’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

A few can climb to an unperishing sun,
Or live on the edges of the mystic moon
And channel to earth-mind the wizard ray.

A few’ exceptional beings ‘can climb’ up from the earth ‘to an unperishing sun’, a permanent ‘sun’. In terms of consciousness this might mean reaching the supermind. Or they can ‘live on the edges of the mystic moon’, the overmind levels. And from there they can ‘channel to earth-mind’ that ‘wizard ray’, that ‘ray’ that works miracles. But such beings are very few:

The heroes and the demigods are few
To whom the close immortal voices speak
And to their acts the heavenly clan are near.

On earth there have been, there may still be ‘heroes’ and ‘demigods’, half-divine beings, to whom those ‘immortal voices’ can ‘speak’; but such receptive beings are ‘few’. They can not only hear the ‘immortal voices’ but ‘the heavenly clan’, the beings who live in heaven, are close to their actions; ‘clan’ means ‘a close-knit group of interrelated families’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Few are the silences in which Truth is heard,
Unveiling the timeless utterance in her deeps;
Few are the splendid moments of the seers.

These things are rare here on earth – moments of silence when we hear the voice of ‘Truth’ that unveils, that reveals, the ‘timeless utterance’: the eternal creative Word that lies concealed in her secret depths. Very ‘Few’ and rare ‘are the splendid moments of the seers’, those who see and can express ‘Truth’ – the rishis.

Heaven’s call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds;
The doors of light are sealed to common mind
And earth’s needs nail to earth the human mass,
Only in an uplifting hour of stress
Men answer to the touch of greater things:

A ‘call’ from heaven very rarely reaches the earth, and even more rarely does a human heart hear it and respond. ‘The doors of light are sealed’, closed up, locked up and ‘sealed’, to the ‘common mind’ of human beings. The ‘needs’ of ‘earth’, our physical needs, keep most of us, ‘the human mass’, nailed to the material world so that it is only very rarely, at very special moments, ‘in an uplifting hour of stress‘, that we human beings can ‘answer’ heaven’s call and respond ‘to the touch of greater things’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Or, raised by some strong hand to breathe heaven-air,
They slide back to the mud from which they climbed;
In the mud of which they are made, whose law they know
They joy in safe return to a friendly base,
And, though something in them weeps for glory lost
And greatness murdered, they accept their fall.

By Grace it may happen that ‘some strong hand’ – the hand of the Mother or Sri Aurobindo – lifts us up so that we can ‘breathe’ some higher ‘air’. But too often it happens that soon we just ‘slide back’ down to the earth ‘mud’, from which they have raised us. When we get back to the earthly mud that we are made of, this physical state where we feel familiar, normal, we feel better because we have returned safely ‘to a friendly base’, to a familiar comforting kind of ‘base’. Although something in us, our soul, may weep for the loss of the glory that we briefly experienced and lost, a ‘greatness’ which seems to have been ‘murdered’, we accept our fall.

To be the common man they think the best,
To live as others live is their delight.

So this is very human: better to be ordinary, ‘To live as others live’, and not be too exceptional; that feels dangerous. We read about how when human beings answer to the touch of greater things very often they slide back to the mud from which they climbed, because that is familiar to them. Something in them, perhaps the soul, might weep for the glory that they have missed or lost. But still they think it is best to be like everybody else. ‘To be the common man they think the best, / To live as others live is their delight’. And now this wonderful divine vision who is speaking to Savitri explains why this is so:

For most are built on Nature’s early plan
And owe small debt to a superior plane;
The human average is their level pitch,
A thinking animal’s material range.

He says that most human beings ‘are built on Nature’s early plan’: they are still living on an elementary level and onlya small part of them belongs to a higher plane. For most people, ‘The human average is their level pitch’: they do not soar very high nor sink very low but remain on a middle level:‘The human average’: ‘A thinking animal’s material range’ – the limited range of experience and feeling which the animal body restricts us to.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

My will, my call is there in men and things;
But the Inconscient lies at the world’s grey back
And draws to its breast of Night and Death and Sleep.

Although the divine will and call are there something is pulling us back. The divine will, the divine ‘call is there in men and things’, in all things. ‘But the Inconscient’, the unconscious origin is lying there at the back, ‘at the world’s grey back’ in the area we are not conscious of, and it exerts a power of attraction: it draws us towards it, ‘to its breast of Night and Death and Sleep’. That is described so beautifully in the very first page of the poem where the poet shows us the Mind of Night awake, knowing that the divine Dawn is approaching, but wanting to go back to sleep just like us sometimes when we wake up in the morning. We think “Oh, is it morning already? I want to go back to sleep.” That is the pull of the inconscient, which is drawing us back into unconsciousness, and into sleep, inertia, laziness and into death: ‘its breast of Night and Death and Sleep’.

Although it is not a conscious progress, the force of evolution is working even in material things. Otherwise how could life emerge at all? This progression has happened. Even the physicists tell us that at the beginning of the universe, immediately after what they call the Big Bang, there was nothing like atoms. There was some kind of primal soup of plasma. Some evolution had to go on for what we call ‘Matter’ to come into existence. And Sri Aurobindo tells us that that could only happen because present even within those completely disaggregated particles, whatever they were, the divine consciousness was there. And this call is there in men and things. You might have heard me tell about one of the Mother’s disciples who came and gave a talk here long ago before we had these buildings. He had had a dream or a vision or experience. He told the Mother : “I thought I was a pebble and I was lying on the beach with a lot of other pebbles and you and Sri Aurobindo were there too.” And the Mother answered, “Yes it is true.” So even in the pebble the divine presence is there. The individual soul is beginning to form: that spark of divinity is beginning to form its psychic personality around it, and will continue to do so through all the stages of evolution.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The Inconscient could not read without man’s mind
The mystery of the world its sleep has made:
Man is its key to unlock a conscious door.
But still it holds him dangled in its grasp:
It draws its giant circle round his thoughts,
It shuts his heart to the supernal Light.

But inconscient Nature, that ‘fond ignorant mother’, would not be able to understand the mystery of the world she herself has made, without the help of the human mind. It is as if she has created this world in her sleep without knowing what she was doing. There are people who walk in their sleep and do all kinds of things without waking up and without realising what they have done. Inconscient Nature needs ‘man’s mind’ to help it read ‘The mystery of the world its sleep has made’. This means that humanity, the human race, is like a ‘key to unlock a conscious door’, enabling the Inconscient to become conscious. But it seems as if Nature does not want to use that key. It still keeps the human mind ‘dangled in its grasp’. It does not want to put it in the lock and unlock the door. It limits our thoughts and ‘draws its giant circle’ of night and death and sleep around our thoughts and closes our hearts ‘to the supernal Light’. That is why it is so difficult for us to progress. There is this drag of unconscious matter on us, holding us back.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Although the race is bound by its own kind,
The soul in man is greater than his fate:
Above the wash and surge of Time and Space,
Disengaging from the cosmic commonalty
By which all life is kin in grief and joy,
Delivered from the universal Law
The sunlike single and transcendent spirit
Can blaze its way through the mind’s barrier wall
And burn alone in the eternal sky,
Inhabitant of a wide and endless calm.

This is why progress happens: because, despite everything, ‘The soul in man is greater than his fate’: his human destiny. We are not only our outer nature, our human nature. All of us have a greater divine nature within us and that inner spirit is ‘Above the wash and surge of Time and Space’, as if Time is a great ocean with its tides coming and going. The godhead explains to Savitri that it is possible for the individual soul to disengage itself from ‘the cosmic commonalty / By which all life is kin in grief and joy’: it is possible for the soul within to detach itself from the cosmic law that binds all creatures, which connects all life ‘in grief and joy’, in duality. ‘Kin’ means a family relationship, close family relationship. The spirit can deliver itself ‘from the universal Law’ of nature because it is like a sun: ‘The sunlike single and transcendent spirit / Can blaze its way’, can just burn its way ‘through the mind’s barrier wall’ and rise up to ‘burn alone in the eternal sky’ and inhabit a space of ‘wide and endless calm’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

But Savitri answered to the radiant God:
“In vain thou temptst with solitary bliss
Two spirits saved out of a suffering world;
My soul and his indissolubly linked
In the one task for which our lives were born,
To raise the world to God in deathless Light,
To bring God down to the world on earth we came,
To change the earthly life to life divine.

This is Savitri’s answer to the glorious godhead: she says, “Why are you tempting us with ‘solitary bliss’?” She wants all the gifts which he is offering her, not for herself, not even for herself and Satyavan, but for the whole world, ‘for earth and men’. So she says, “It is useless for you to try tempting us as ‘Two spirits’ – Savitri and Satyavan – ‘saved out of a suffering world’. That is not what we want. My soul and his soul, Satyavan’s soul, are ‘indissolubly linked’. They cannot be separated.” ‘Indissoluble’ comes from the verb ‘to dissolve’. If something is indissoluble it cannot be dissolved. The souls of Savitri and Satyavan are linked together forever. They cannot be separated. And they have taken human lives on earth for ‘one task’ which has two aspects: ‘To raise the world to God in deathless Light’ – to uplift this suffering and imperfect material world to the godlike state of never-ending immortal light, and also ‘To bring God down to the world’, to establish the Divine Presence in this world. “That is why we came on earth”, she says: ‘To change the earthly life to life divine’. What a beautiful reply!

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Whence came this profitless wilderness of stars,
This mighty barren wheeling of the suns?
Who made the soul of futile life in Time,
Planted a purpose and a hope in the heart,
Set Nature to a huge and meaningless task
Or planned her million-aeoned effort’s waste?
What force condemned to birth and death and tears
These conscious creatures crawling on the globe?

The word ‘whence’ means ‘from where’. We look up and out from our world into the vastness of space and see a ‘wilderness of stars’ scattered across what seems to be empty space. Savitri seems to be mocking the glorious godhead, asking him “Where has this vast universe come from? Is it ‘profitless’? Is it useless, purposeless? Is it barren?” ‘Barren’ means ‘sterile’ or ‘infertile’ so that nothing will grow there. “Is this huge universe, full of ‘This mighty barren wheeling of the suns’, all these billions and trillions of suns that are whirling in our universe, without any purpose? If so, ‘Who has made the soul of futile life in Time’? Who could possibly make the soul of a life that would be useless, futile, that would have no purpose ‘in Time’? Who has ‘Planted a purpose and a hope in the heart’ of every human being? Has the one who has created all this really ‘Set Nature to a huge and meaningless task’ which has no aim, no purpose, no significance? Who has planned the ‘waste’ of Nature’s ‘million-aeoned effort’, this effort which has lasted for so many aeons?” ‘Aeons’ are immensely long stretches of time, and there have been millions of them. “Is it all a complete waste? Who has done this? Who would have done this? ‘What force’ has deliberately ‘condemned to birth and death and tears / These conscious creatures’ who seem to be just ‘crawling’ about like ants on our earthly globe? Can it really be like that, as you seem to be saying?” And Savitri goes on to give her own very different version of the creation and purpose of the universe:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

If thou and I are true, the world is true;
Although thou hide thyself behind thy works,
To be is not a senseless paradox;
Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God;
What hides within her breast she must reveal.

She says, “If you, O blissful godhead, ‘are true’ and I am true, if we really exist, then this world that we exist in must also be true. You are hiding yourself, disguising yourself, behind all these appearances that you have made. But I am sure that existence ‘is not a senseless paradox’.” A ‘paradox’ is something that seems to contradict itself. Savitri insists that the world is not like that. It is not meaningless. It is not self- contradictory. There is a deeper meaning in it. Because ‘God has made earth’, the material world, ‘earth must make’ God in herself. She must evolve to reveal the divinity that is hidden within her: ‘What hides within her breast she must reveal’.

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

I claim thee for the world that thou hast made.
If man lives bound by his humanity,
If he is tied for ever to his pain,
Let a greater being then arise from man,
And the Immortal shine through earthly forms.

She continues: “I am claiming you for this world that you have made. And if it is really true what I have been told”– Death told her, and now this godhead also seems to be telling her – “that human beings cannot become anything else but human beings,” she says, “if it is really true that ‘man’, the human race ‘lives bound by his humanity,’ limited always to be only human, if human beings are ‘tied for ever to’ their pain, their suffering, then you must enable greater beings to arise”: ‘Let a greater being then arise from man’. From humanity another nobler species must emerge so that there will be superhuman beings on earth who can mate with ‘the Eternal’, so that the Immortal can ‘shine through earthly forms’, the material forms we experience here. There has to be a transformation of earthly forms to reveal the immortal divinity that is within them.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Else were creation vain and this great world
A nothing that in Time’s moments seems to be.
But I have seen through the insentient mask;
I have felt a secret spirit stir in things
Carrying the body of the growing God:
It looks through veiling forms at veilless truth;
It pushes back the curtain of the gods;
It climbs towards its own eternity.”

“Otherwise,” she says, “if the earth is not able to reveal the divine being, the divine presence that is hidden within her, then this whole creation would be in vain and this great world would just be an illusion, ‘A nothing’ that only ‘seems’ to exist in the succession of the ‘moments’ of Time.” “But”, she says, “I know that it is not like that, because ‘I have seen through’ this ‘mask’, this disguise of ‘insentient’ matter.” ‘Insentient’ means ‘without senses’, without any conscious awareness. If we look at brute matter it seems to be like that. But Savitri insists, “This appearance of matter is only a mask that you have put on to disguise yourself, to hide yourself. I have seen through that mask of matter and I have experienced that in all material things ‘a secret spirit’ is stirring, moving, and that ‘secret spirit’ is ‘Carrying the body of the growing God’, the God who is growing within all of us as the earth evolves.” The idea that God may be growing is unfamiliar to us. But if he has disguised himself as all this insentient, inconscient nothingness, he is also growing up in it and through it, at first in very simple forms, then in more complex and conscious ones, and then in thinking animals like human beings. Savitri insists, “Within all this, behind the disguise of insentient Matter, I have felt the movement of a ‘secret spirit’, which is carrying this whole process forward. Through all these forms, these disguises and veils, that secret spirit is seeing the unveiled truth which is within them and pushing back ‘the curtain of the gods’, the veil of appearances which the cosmic powers have drawn over things. It is revealing the truth – the presence that is behind the curtain. That secret spirit is climbing ‘towards its own eternity’, towards the full revelation and manifestation of its own eternal and infinite transcendent state.” What a wonderful reply! What a wonderful and powerful expression of Sri Aurobindo’s vision of things!

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

In the impetuous drive of thy heart of flame,
In thy passion to deliver man and earth,
Indignant at the impediments of Time
And the slow evolution’s sluggard steps,
Lead not the spirit in an ignorant world
To dare too soon the adventure of the Light,
Pushing the bound and slumbering god in man
Awakened mid the ineffable silences
Into endless vistas of the unknown and unseen,
Across the last confines of the limiting Mind
And the Superconscient’s perilous border line
Into the danger of the Infinite.

He warns her not to be in too much of a hurry, telling her “Do not push humanity and the earth’s evolution forward too quickly.” He says, “I know you want to do that because of your ‘heart of flame’. In your fiery aspiring heart there is an ‘impetuous drive’ towards the future, towards new achievements.” “But”, he says, “in your passion ‘to deliver’, to liberate ‘man and earth’ do not feel ‘Indignant’. Do not become angry ‘at the impediments of Time’.” ‘Impediments’ are obstacles, obstructions which prevent us from moving freely and quickly. ‘Time’ places ‘impediments’ in front of us. We cannot fulfil all our dreams immediately; ‘the tardy process of the pace of Time’ also seems to be part of the ‘world-plan’ so that evolution moves very slowly, with ‘sluggard steps’. A sluggard is a lazy slow-moving person. A slug is an animal like a snail without a shell; it moves around very slowly leaving a trail of silver slime as it eats up the vegetables in your garden.

Q: We have the word ‘sluggish’.

Yes, exactly: if you are feeling sluggish you are reluctant to move. So the godhead warns Savitri: “You feel that evolution is sluggish and that it is moving too slowly and taking far too long. But be careful: do not ‘Lead … the spirit in an ignorant world’ – this ignorant world of humanity which is not ready for further advance – ‘To dare too soon the adventure of the Light’“: the demanding adventure of the higher consciousness. Things have to be prepared. They have to take their time. Asleep within human beings there is a god, a divine being. But he is slumbering. He is sleeping and he is bound. He is tied up, limited. He cannot move freely. So “do not push that ‘bound and slumbering god in man’ to wake up too quickly – to wake up and find himself in the middle of the ‘ineffable silences’ of the higher realms.” ‘Ineffable’ means ‘unable to be grasped or described by the mind’. “Do not wake him up too soon, to find himself in the vast emptinesses of space, waking up to the vastness of the universe, the ‘endless vistas of the unknown and unseen’. Do not push him ‘Across the last confines of the limiting Mind’” – ‘confines’ are limits, borderlines, frontiers.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

But if thou wilt not wait for Time and God,
Do then thy work and force thy will on Fate.
As I have taken from thee my load of night
And taken from thee my twilight’s doubts and dreams,
So now I take my light of utter Day.
These are my symbol kingdoms but not here
Can the great choice be made that fixes fate
Or uttered the sanction of the Voice supreme.

He says, “If you really are not willing to wait for the process of Time and the slow unfolding of God, you have the power: do your work: ‘force’ your ‘will on Fate’, on the fixed laws of the universe. I have taken away from you ‘my load of night’.” She passed through that terrible world of Everlasting Night and her soul conquered it with its light. Now he says, “I have taken away from you the heavy load of darkness and unconsciousness, and I have taken away from you the twilight”. She passed through the worlds of The Double Twilight: The Twilight of the Ideal and The Twilight of the Earthly Real. “I have taken away from you ‘my twilight’s doubts and dreams’.” Savitri experienced beautiful dreams in The Twilight of the Ideal and discouraging doubts and suggestions in The Twilight of the Earthly Real. He continues, “Now you are here in this World of Everlasting Day. I am going to take this away from you as well, because ‘These are my symbol kingdoms’.” The realms she has passed through were symbolic states of consciousness through which human beings pass. He tells her, “These are my symbol kingdoms of darkness, twilight, day, ‘but not here / Can the great choice be made’. If you are going to impose your will on fate you cannot do it here in this heavenly world of Everlasting Day. Here that great choice cannot be made, the choice which will ‘fix fate’, which will decide and determine the way that things work out in the universe. And here you will not be able to receive the sanction of the Supreme.”

Q: What does this mean?

It means that in order to change the laws of this manifestation Savitri will have to pass beyond it, beyond all the symbol kingdoms and realms and worlds of this universe.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Arise upon a ladder of greater worlds
To the infinity where no world can be.
But not in the wide air where a greater Life
Uplifts its mystery and its miracle,
And not on the luminous peaks of summit Mind,
Or in the hold where subtle Matter’s spirit
Hides in its light of shimmering secrecies,
Can there be heard the Eternal’s firm command
That joins the head of destiny to its base.

She must rise beyond even the greater Life, even beyond ‘the luminous peaks of summit Mind’ and the realm of subtle Matter. He says, “You are going to have to rise ‘upon a ladder’ with many steps, a ladder of worlds, ‘greater worlds’. And you will have to rise beyond the top of that ladder and enter ‘infinity’: the transcendent state beyond all limits and limitations and determinations, ‘where no world can be’ because only there can ‘the Eternal’s firm command’ be heard, the command which connects the material realm, the ‘base’ of the manifestation, with ‘the head of destiny’. Aswapati also climbed up this ladder and explored the World of Subtle Matter, the subtle physical world ‘where subtle Matter’s spirit / Hides in its light of shimmering secrecies’: a world of unbelievable beauty of forms. He entered into The Worlds of the Greater Life and reached the highest levels of Mind: ‘the luminous peaks of summit Mind’. But the Godhead tells Savitri that in those worlds the Eternal’s ‘firm command’ cannot be heard, the word of the Supreme which connects ‘the head of destiny’, the highest level, where destiny is decided, ‘to its base’: the material world.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Now the glorious godhead will explain to Savitri the two Powers which are supporting and maintaining the entire universe:

Two are the Powers that hold the ends of Time;
Spirit foresees, Matter unfolds its thought,
The dumb executor of God’s decrees,
Omitting no iota and no dot,
Agent unquestioning, inconscient, stark,
Evolving inevitably a charged content,
Intention of his force in Time and Space,
In animate beings and inanimate things;
Immutably it fulfils its ordered task,
It cancels not a tittle of things done;
Unswerving from the oracular command
It alters not the steps of the Unseen.

‘Two are the Powers’ that sustain and ‘hold the ends of Time’: One of them is ‘Spirit’, which has foreseen everything that must happen in Time; and the other is ‘Matter’. These are the two extremes, the two Powers. And then he describes what their roles are. He says that ‘Spirit foresees’ everything that must happen and be done. Matter does not foresee; it gradually ‘unfolds’ the spirit’s ‘thought’. Matter is just carrying out the ‘decrees’, the commands of Spirit. It is ‘The dumb executor’. An ‘executor’ is somebody who makes sure that somebody else’s will, not his own will, is carried out. Matter does not decide anything, it just quietly makes sure that the intentions of the Spirit are carried out. And it does that very, very minutely. It does not leave anything out. ‘Iota’ was the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, so we use it to mean something that is very, very small. ‘No dot’, no tiny little dot or point is left out because Matter is an ‘unquestioning’ ‘agent’. It just follows the command that it has been given. It does not wonder, it does not think or ask “Why does it have to be like this? or “Why do I have to do it like this?” “Couldn’t it be different?” Matter is an unquestioning agent because it is ‘inconscient’ and is just purely what it is. It is ‘stark’: it is nothing else but simply and purely itself. But all the time it is inevitably evolving what is within it – the ‘charged content’ which it is holding. It is as if Matter has been filled with the divine Intention and is gradually revealing it in the course of time.

Matter does not decide anything, it just quietly makes sure that the intentions of the Spirit are carried out. And it does that very, very minutely. It does not leave anything out. ‘Iota’ was the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, so we use it to mean something that is very, very small. ‘No dot’, no tiny little dot or point is left out because Matter is an ‘unquestioning’ ‘agent’. It just follows the command that it has been given. It does not wonder, it does not think or ask “Why does it have to be like this? or “Why do I have to do it like this?” “Couldn’t it be different?” Matter is an unquestioning agent because it is ‘inconscient’ and is just purely what it is. It is ‘stark’: it is nothing else but simply and purely itself. But all the time it is inevitably evolving what is within it – the ‘charged content’ which it is holding. It is as if Matter has been filled with the divine Intention and is gradually revealing it in the course of time.

When you are ‘charged’ with a task, you are given a certain responsibility to carry out or discharge. The ‘charged content’ which Matter is carrying is the intention of God and of his Conscious-Force that is acting ‘in Time and Space’. That intention and that force of implementation are acting ‘In animate beings’, living creatures as well as in ‘inanimate things’: rocks and stones and wind and so on. ‘Immutably’, without changing, Matter goes on fulfilling ‘its ordered task’, one thing after another. And it does not cancel out or change anything, not even ‘a tittle’. A ‘tittle’ is a very tiny amount. Whatever has been done has been done and it cannot be undone. Matter is ‘Unswerving’. When you are on your bike and a dog runs across your way you may have to ‘swerve’ to avoid it. But Matter does not turn away from its appointed path. It sticks to ‘the oracular command’ which it has been given from above. It does not alter ‘the steps of the Unseen’ in any way. The godhead tells Savitri, “If you want to change something you are going to have to deal with these two powers: the power of the Spirit’s Force and the power of unswerving immutable Matter. And you cannot do that here in these in-between worlds. You will have to go beyond them.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

In an immense and world-destroying pause
She heard a million creatures cry to her.
Through the tremendous stillness of her thoughts
Immeasurably the woman’s nature spoke:
“Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts,
My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls.”

After she hears the voice there is a kind of pause, a silence in which it seems as if that silence will destroy all world, all manifestation, all expression, all form. But in that pause Savitri hears all the individual creatures calling out to her: ‘She heard a million creatures cry to her’. It is a kind of an appeal. She is not thinking. Her thoughts are completely silent. ‘Through the tremendous stillness of her thoughts’ her nature, her human ‘woman’s nature spoke’, but ‘Immeasurably’, limitlessly. She says, “Yes, Lord, please give me your Oneness! But I want it in these ‘many approaching hearts’, in these many, many ‘numberless souls’.”

This pattern is repeated each time. The first time she is offered Peace, the peace of cessation and extinction. She replies, “Yes, Lord, give me your peace, but I want it within me and within the hearts of all human beings, to protect human beings in all the turbulent ‘roar and ruin of wild Time’. The soul of man on earth needs your peace to support and protect him.” The second time she is offered Oneness, and she replies, “Yes Lord, I want your Oneness ‘in many approaching hearts, / My sweet infinity of thy numberless souls’.” It is not a characterless infinity, but a ‘sweet infinity of numberless souls’: an infinity of love and sympathy and relationship, a relationship of oneness between all the ‘numberless souls’ of the Divine.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]